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Doc Approved: An App Avicenna Would Appreciate

Dr. Mohseni is an emergency physician in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and the counsel to the president for innovation and technology of Emergency Medicine Associates. He is the editor of his own blog, Creative Health Labs. (See FastLinks.)

‘An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death,” declared the polymath Avicenna. This renowned father of modern medicine understood the great power and trust placed in the hands of physicians, who by their knowledge and skill can save lives. Or not. We emergency physicians are blessed with incredible opportunities to favorably affect many lives in every field of medicine, yet we are plagued by a recurring fear that the universe of medicine is expanding faster than our abilities to keep up.

We try to find tools that are efficient at making us smarter and better physicians, and Elsevier helps with the Case Reviews app for iOS, a series of positively reviewed books and online modules on diagnostic imaging that have been adapted for quick tutorials on iOS. The iOS version lacks a lot of the explanatory details that the books contain, but the focused explanations may be better suited for the emergency medicine mind.

The free app comes with a series of free sample cases from each module. Each full module costs $19.99, and has 200 cases. Each case has multiple diagnostic images, explanations, a quiz question, and explanations for right and wrong answers. The user is also able to turn on and off helpful little arrows that point out exactly what finding on the imaging study is being explained.

Consider buying the emergency, musculoskeletal, and thoracic modules if you want to impress specialty colleagues with your ability to analyze complicated diagnostic imaging studies. I would recommend buying the actual books instead if you want the more detailed explanations for each case. Avicenna said it best, “The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”

Click and Connect!Access the links in EMN by reading this issue on our website or in our iPad app, both available onwww.EM-News.com.